Windows Update also requires you to use IE. How is this different?
Microsoft is offering a service and provides it through IE. If you don't want to use Windows Updates and be forced to use IE, download patches directly. If you don't want to use "Shop for Music Online" and be forced to use IE, don't.
I like buying through the iTunes Music Store, but I don't mind having a choice.
The bill doesn't talk about taxing internet sales, it talks about taxing remote sales. Sales includes mail order, phone order, internet order, any order.
The bill only applies to states that agree on a unified, simplified tax system. The same items will be taxed in every state that agrees.
Let's see. I have a computer. I input the zip code of the person who has placed the order and it tells me the tax. Hasn't anyone reading slashdot heard of computers? They sometimes can be used to do computations for people.
Once a quarter, I fill out at most 50 forms and send 50 checks. A burden? Yes, but not that great. If the system is truly simplified, my computer should be able to fill out the 50 identical forms for me for the 50 different states.
The bill as introduced only applies to those with more that $5,000,000 in "gross remote taxable sales." Note it does not include local sales or sales of non-taxable items.
I don't know about your mom and pop, but mine don't take in more than $5,000,000.
The Streamlined Sales Tax Project "will develop measures to design, test and implement a sales and use tax system that radically simplifies sales and use taxes."
The idea is to get many states to agree what should be taxed, e.g., books: yes, bread: no. When a large number of states agree, then Amazon and other retailers will be able to collect taxes on book sales for all those states and not collect taxes on bread sales.
The confusion of 50 different sets of tax rules will not exist. Once the majority of states agree on what should be taxed, then a simple lookup by zip code would produce the correct tax on every purchase. This would be true for phone orders, mail orders, and internet orders.
The most difficult part will be the remittance of the tax to the fifty states. That is why most porposals include exemptions for small retailers. Amazon should have no problem sending quarterly payments to each state based on the zip code given by the buyer.
Watching the Los Angeles Dodgers game on ESPN last night, we noticed a strange banner ad for Sportscenter behind home plate. We then realized that was where a physical banner ad for Fox Sports West exists in the stadium. The ESPN ad was a digital overlay placed to cover-up the actual ad for their competitor.
I can't find a google reference, but I believe that Fox sued and lost. ESPN has the right to alter reality in broadcasting the game as they are broadcasting over their own network.
Let f = fraction of purchases that are albums and Y be the total number of purchases. The total songs sold are TS = 10 fY + 1 (1-f)Y. The fraction of songs sold as parts of albums is (10 fY)/TS. Setting this latter fraction to.45 yields an f of 0.07563, or 7.563%.
For 100,000 purchases, 7,563 are albums (75,630 songs) and 92,437 are single songs. Total songs sold are 168,067. The fraction of songs sold as part of albums is 75,630/168,067 =.4500.
Many of the comments claim that is important for students to learn to use microsoft products.
Read the restrictions on the donation again. There is no restriction on students buying, using, or learning microsoft products. The restriction is on the University buying microsoft products.
Does the student really care what operating system the campus servers use? Do they really need IIS to serve the campus web pages?
This donation could save the University millions in the long run by helping it to get away from cost of Microsoft licenses. My university is considering moving away from Microsoft, and $2.4 million might be just enough to tip the balance. Tell your grandfather to give his donor my address if his university doesn't want the money.
The article at the Washington Post is not as complete as the one at the New York Times. In particular, AOL is trying to sell a value-added service to consumers who already have broadband service. "In the next few weeks, AOL is going to introduce an improved $15-a-month service, with a bundle of content and services meant for people who already buy broadband connections from their cable or telephone companies. That offering will include a limited version of MusicNet that will let users download 20 songs a month and listen to another 20 one time."
For those who don't want the regular AOL, "for $8.95 a month, users will be able to listen to a catalog of music, now at 250,000 songs and growing, on their computers... The standard $8.95 version of the service will allow users to listen to an unlimited number of songs on demand...They can also download the songs to their computers for higher sound quality and the ability to listen to them when not on the Internet." What you will not be able to do for $8.95 is burn CD's from the downloaded songs. "A subscriber can listen to MusicNet's downloads on no more than two computers. They also cannot be copied to other devices or sent to other people."
The premium service is $17.95 and allows the burning of 10 songs a month in addition to unlimited listening.
You have made the right comparison, but drew the wrong conclusion.
If software is produced that has a legitimate purpose, should it be banned because it might be used for an illegal or immoral purpose? If it is filtering software, the typical slashdottee would say, "bad software, ban software." If if is CD or DVD copying software, the slashdottee says, "good software, banning bad."
Hypocrisy is running rampant in this thread, but that is not unusual at slashdot.
I don't understand the situation you are in. By using the past tense, you indicate you already bid on a contract, but you didn't know what you were bidding on. The opposite of what you appear to want is a work for hire. The other company asks you to produce a program, a sculpture, or a musical composition for which they will pay you money. Once they have paid, they own the work, and it is their's to do with as they please. This can include the copyright and reproduction rights. If they advertised that they wanted a company to produce a work for hire and you bid on it, it is a little late to ask how not to give them what they said they wanted and you agreed to give them.
On the other hand, if you want to retain the copyright and any reproduction and resale rights, then you should put it in the contract.
I am still mystified on how you bid on a contract without knowing these basics.
Verizon used to be GTE telephone, the one competitor to Pacific Bell here in Southern California. It was NOT part of the Bell monopoly, but its largest competition. Now, however, (from the investor information page of their web site)
"Verizon Communications, (NYSE:VZ), formed by the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE, is one of the world's leading providers of high-growth communications services. Verizon companies are the largest providers of wireline and wireless communications in the United States, with over 135 million access line equivalents and over 31 million wireless customers."
I don't recall whether GTE or Bell Atlantic was the larger company at the time of the merger. As a former GTE customer (now Verizon customer) I definitely do not think of them as a decendent of the Bell monopoly.
Dell offers the Detto Intellimover when you buy a PC. I have used it twice, both times when migrating from older PC's without CD burners to a new PC. It worked well. The cable has a centronics parallel printer connection on both ends (there is now a usb version).
It also contains a drag and drop "ftp" program for moving things back and forth between the two computers, so you could use it to synch data on two machines that were not networked.
Finally, it moves program files as easily as you can move them from C to D on your own computer (which is why they recommend reinstalling).
I have had several good experiences with Debian. Last January, version 22.1 of lilo came out with some changes that broke on my old hardware. I filed a report through the Debian Bug Tracking System. The Debian maintainer, Russell Coker, contacted me with some questions and suggestions. After a few tries, he put me in direct email contact with John Coffman, the upstream maintainer of lilo. He in turn asked questions, made suggestions, and found a solution. He then suggested I try the beta version of 22.2 from his own site, and helped me use some test software he had developed.
My role was to stick with it, try every suggestion, and send all requested output back to John. In the end, I had a working system, and lilo could handle a few more machines with quirky hardware.
I don't program, but I felt really good about my contribution. So report the bugs, but don't stop with just getting your own problem solved. Sending that extra information back to the maintainer helps him improve the software and makes life easier for other users.
On the other hand, I felt really lucky that both Russell and John were interested in me and my problem. Neither one was just trying to get rid of "the common user"; both were working to make free software better, and I was happy to do my part.
New York Times Report: Different Focus
on
Sun To Sell Linux PCs
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The New York Times article, The New Sun Ready to Push Linux as Alternative to Microsoft, emphasizes the push for Linux and StarOffice, without any mention of hardware. All of these articles are guessing what Sun is going to say tomorrow, when the offical announcement is to be made.
I seriously doubt Prof. Thomas' daughter is a professional graphic designer. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she's a high-school kid who just knows how to use Photoshop.
Let me get this straight. Your wife is going to be at a University. The last time I looked, every university had an IT department, and they are all desperate for people. They don't pay top salaries, but they are always hiring.
Or is your skill set so limited that a university wouldn't hire you?
I'm not sure you should assume the net is different. Your example is an obscure website that is largely unknown until Google and then slashdot get ahold of it. Replace "website" with pamphlet, "Google" with library, and "slashdot" with New York Times. Was the pamphlet published when the original author self published it, when the library put it on the shelf, or when the New York Times wrote a story about the uproar over a library putting a pamphlet with salacious details of Cowboy Neal's herring obsession on its shelves?
Why would the court's definition of publication date be any different for the self published pamphlet and your obscure website?
California has a sales and use tax. If you buy an item out of state, you owe the use tax. Quoting the Board of Equalization FAQ, "The most common example of a purchase subject to the use tax is a purchase of an item for use in California from an out-of-state retailer. Out-of-state retailers who are engaged in business in this state are required to collect the use tax, whenever applicable, from the consumer at the time of making the sale."
In addition, if the business from whom you make the purchase does not collect the tax, you are obligated to pay the tax yourself. This is most common when you purchase a car out of state and then go to register the car. The DMV will collect both the registration fees and the use tax for the Board of Equalization. The use tax applies to all purchases subject to the use tax, not just cars. (Regulation 1685(a)(2))
I used to have a Corvus hard disk. It weighed 30 pounds, was roughly 3 feet deep, 20 inches wide, and 8 inches high, and had a capacity of 10 MB. It had it's own card that went into a slot on the original IBM PC (prior to the XT), and you started the boot from a floppy disk.
You have to read the sections entitled "On Remand." In particular, on page 86 the court states "Should plaintiffs choose to pursue a tying claim..." and "plaintiffs must show that Microsoft's conduct unreasonably restrained competition."
This means that the facts of tying were not sufficiently established in the original trial and would have to be reconsidered by the new judge if the plaintiffs wish to continue the claim of tying.
If the price of gas changes, a gas station will change the price in the middle of the day. In these times in the US, whatever the price at your favorite station is in the morning, there is a good chance that it will be different by the afternoon.
How is this different?
Once I got caught in a price change. One worker was changing the prices on the sign outside. Another was changing the prices on the pumps on their computers inside. I started pumping gas and discovered at the end that I was being charged $.04 more than any other pump. Either the prices on the computer were reduced on the other pumps before mine or they were changed between the time I started pumping and the time I finished.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it was sailor, not shepard.
And I thought people who herded sheep were called shepherds.
Windows Update also requires you to use IE. How is this different?
Microsoft is offering a service and provides it through IE. If you don't want to use Windows Updates and be forced to use IE, download patches directly. If you don't want to use "Shop for Music Online" and be forced to use IE, don't.
I like buying through the iTunes Music Store, but I don't mind having a choice.
I know this is ./, but geesh!
The bill doesn't talk about taxing internet sales, it talks about taxing remote sales. Sales includes mail order, phone order, internet order, any order.
The bill only applies to states that agree on a unified, simplified tax system. The same items will be taxed in every state that agrees.
Let's see. I have a computer. I input the zip code of the person who has placed the order and it tells me the tax. Hasn't anyone reading slashdot heard of computers? They sometimes can be used to do computations for people.
Once a quarter, I fill out at most 50 forms and send 50 checks. A burden? Yes, but not that great. If the system is truly simplified, my computer should be able to fill out the 50 identical forms for me for the 50 different states.
The bill as introduced only applies to those with more that $5,000,000 in "gross remote taxable sales." Note it does not include local sales or sales of non-taxable items.
I don't know about your mom and pop, but mine don't take in more than $5,000,000.
The Streamlined Sales Tax Project "will develop measures to design, test and implement a sales and use tax system that radically simplifies sales and use taxes."
The idea is to get many states to agree what should be taxed, e.g., books: yes, bread: no. When a large number of states agree, then Amazon and other retailers will be able to collect taxes on book sales for all those states and not collect taxes on bread sales.
The confusion of 50 different sets of tax rules will not exist. Once the majority of states agree on what should be taxed, then a simple lookup by zip code would produce the correct tax on every purchase. This would be true for phone orders, mail orders, and internet orders.
The most difficult part will be the remittance of the tax to the fifty states. That is why most porposals include exemptions for small retailers. Amazon should have no problem sending quarterly payments to each state based on the zip code given by the buyer.
Watching the Los Angeles Dodgers game on ESPN last night, we noticed a strange banner ad for Sportscenter behind home plate. We then realized that was where a physical banner ad for Fox Sports West exists in the stadium. The ESPN ad was a digital overlay placed to cover-up the actual ad for their competitor.
I can't find a google reference, but I believe that Fox sued and lost. ESPN has the right to alter reality in broadcasting the game as they are broadcasting over their own network.
Let f = fraction of purchases that are albums and Y be the total number of purchases. The total songs sold are TS = 10 fY + 1 (1-f)Y. The fraction of songs sold as parts of albums is (10 fY)/TS. Setting this latter fraction to .45 yields an f of 0.07563, or 7.563%.
.4500.
For 100,000 purchases, 7,563 are albums (75,630 songs) and 92,437 are single songs. Total songs sold are 168,067. The fraction of songs sold as part of albums is 75,630/168,067 =
Many of the comments claim that is important for students to learn to use microsoft products.
Read the restrictions on the donation again. There is no restriction on students buying, using, or learning microsoft products. The restriction is on the University buying microsoft products.
Does the student really care what operating system the campus servers use? Do they really need IIS to serve the campus web pages?
This donation could save the University millions in the long run by helping it to get away from cost of Microsoft licenses. My university is considering moving away from Microsoft, and $2.4 million might be just enough to tip the balance. Tell your grandfather to give his donor my address if his university doesn't want the money.
I almost loost it when i read that someone modded this interesting instead of funny!
The article at the Washington Post is not as complete as the one at the New York Times. In particular, AOL is trying to sell a value-added service to consumers who already have broadband service.
...They can also download the songs to their computers for higher sound quality and the ability to listen to them when not on the Internet." What you will not be able to do for $8.95 is burn CD's from the downloaded songs. "A subscriber can listen to MusicNet's downloads on no more than two computers. They also cannot be copied to other devices or sent to other people."
"In the next few weeks, AOL is going to introduce an improved $15-a-month service, with a bundle of content and services meant for people who already buy broadband connections from their cable or telephone companies. That offering will include a limited version of MusicNet that will let users download 20 songs a month and listen to another 20 one time."
For those who don't want the regular AOL, "for $8.95 a month, users will be able to listen to a catalog of music, now at 250,000 songs and growing, on their computers... The standard $8.95 version of the service will allow users to listen to an unlimited number of songs on demand
The premium service is $17.95 and allows the burning of 10 songs a month in addition to unlimited listening.
You have made the right comparison, but drew the wrong conclusion.
If software is produced that has a legitimate purpose, should it be banned because it might be used for an illegal or immoral purpose? If it is filtering software, the typical slashdottee would say, "bad software, ban software." If if is CD or DVD copying software, the slashdottee says, "good software, banning bad."
Hypocrisy is running rampant in this thread, but that is not unusual at slashdot.
I don't understand the situation you are in. By using the past tense, you indicate you already bid on a contract, but you didn't know what you were bidding on. The opposite of what you appear to want is a work for hire. The other company asks you to produce a program, a sculpture, or a musical composition for which they will pay you money. Once they have paid, they own the work, and it is their's to do with as they please. This can include the copyright and reproduction rights. If they advertised that they wanted a company to produce a work for hire and you bid on it, it is a little late to ask how not to give them what they said they wanted and you agreed to give them.
On the other hand, if you want to retain the copyright and any reproduction and resale rights, then you should put it in the contract.
I am still mystified on how you bid on a contract without knowing these basics.
Verizon used to be GTE telephone, the one competitor to Pacific Bell here in Southern California. It was NOT part of the Bell monopoly, but its largest competition. Now, however, (from the investor information page of their web site)
"Verizon Communications, (NYSE:VZ), formed by the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE, is one of the world's leading providers of high-growth communications services. Verizon companies are the largest providers of wireline and wireless communications in the United States, with over 135 million access line equivalents and over 31 million wireless customers."
I don't recall whether GTE or Bell Atlantic was the larger company at the time of the merger. As a former GTE customer (now Verizon customer) I definitely do not think of them as a decendent of the Bell monopoly.
Dell offers the Detto Intellimover when you buy a PC. I have used it twice, both times when migrating from older PC's without CD burners to a new PC. It worked well. The cable has a centronics parallel printer connection on both ends (there is now a usb version).
It also contains a drag and drop "ftp" program for moving things back and forth between the two computers, so you could use it to synch data on two machines that were not networked.
Finally, it moves program files as easily as you can move them from C to D on your own computer (which is why they recommend reinstalling).
I have had several good experiences with Debian. Last January, version 22.1 of lilo came out with some changes that broke on my old hardware. I filed a report through the Debian Bug Tracking System. The Debian maintainer, Russell Coker, contacted me with some questions and suggestions. After a few tries, he put me in direct email contact with John Coffman, the upstream maintainer of lilo. He in turn asked questions, made suggestions, and found a solution. He then suggested I try the beta version of 22.2 from his own site, and helped me use some test software he had developed.
My role was to stick with it, try every suggestion, and send all requested output back to John. In the end, I had a working system, and lilo could handle a few more machines with quirky hardware.
I don't program, but I felt really good about my contribution. So report the bugs, but don't stop with just getting your own problem solved. Sending that extra information back to the maintainer helps him improve the software and makes life easier for other users.
On the other hand, I felt really lucky that both Russell and John were interested in me and my problem. Neither one was just trying to get rid of "the common user"; both were working to make free software better, and I was happy to do my part.
The New York Times article,
The New Sun Ready to Push Linux as Alternative to Microsoft, emphasizes the push for Linux and StarOffice, without any mention of hardware. All of these articles are guessing what Sun is going to say tomorrow, when the offical announcement is to be made.
I seriously doubt Prof. Thomas' daughter is a professional graphic designer. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she's a high-school kid who just knows how to use Photoshop.
That not what Professor Thomas says in his email to the Lai's.
It was a last minute decision, and I asked my daughter, a graphic artist, to provide an image.
Let me get this straight. Your wife is going to be at a University. The last time I looked, every university had an IT department, and they are all desperate for people. They don't pay top salaries, but they are always hiring.
Or is your skill set so limited that a university wouldn't hire you?
I'm not sure you should assume the net is different. Your example is an obscure website that is largely unknown until Google and then slashdot get ahold of it. Replace "website" with pamphlet, "Google" with library, and "slashdot" with New York Times. Was the pamphlet published when the original author self published it, when the library put it on the shelf, or when the New York Times wrote a story about the uproar over a library putting a pamphlet with salacious details of Cowboy Neal's herring obsession on its shelves?
Why would the court's definition of publication date be any different for the self published pamphlet and your obscure website?
at $10 a month for internet gaming on the X-Box.
0 21 1
See the earlier slashdot story
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/20/051
It's not the razors or the blades; it's the shaving cream!
California has a sales and use tax. If you buy an item out of state, you owe the use tax. Quoting the Board of Equalization FAQ, "The most common example of a purchase subject to the use tax is a purchase of an item for use in California from an out-of-state retailer. Out-of-state retailers who are engaged in business in this state are required to collect the use tax, whenever applicable, from the consumer at the time of making the sale."
In addition, if the business from whom you make the purchase does not collect the tax, you are obligated to pay the tax yourself. This is most common when you purchase a car out of state and then go to register the car. The DMV will collect both the registration fees and the use tax for the Board of Equalization. The use tax applies to all purchases subject to the use tax, not just cars. (Regulation 1685(a)(2))
This story was in the LA Times on Monday,August 6.
0 63 863aug06.story
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-000
Wow! Does this patent bring back memories!
I used to have a Corvus hard disk. It weighed 30 pounds, was roughly 3 feet deep, 20 inches wide, and 8 inches high, and had a capacity of 10 MB. It had it's own card that went into a slot on the original IBM PC (prior to the XT), and you started the boot from a floppy disk.
You have to read the sections entitled "On Remand." In particular, on page 86 the court states "Should plaintiffs choose to pursue a tying claim..." and "plaintiffs must show that Microsoft's conduct unreasonably restrained competition."
This means that the facts of tying were not sufficiently established in the original trial and would have to be reconsidered by the new judge if the plaintiffs wish to continue the claim of tying.
If the price of gas changes, a gas station will change the price in the middle of the day. In these times in the US, whatever the price at your favorite station is in the morning, there is a good chance that it will be different by the afternoon.
How is this different?
Once I got caught in a price change. One worker was changing the prices on the sign outside. Another was changing the prices on the pumps on their computers inside. I started pumping gas and discovered at the end that I was being charged $.04 more than any other pump. Either the prices on the computer were reduced on the other pumps before mine or they were changed between the time I started pumping and the time I finished.
The clerk couldn't understand why I was upset.
I usually read at +3. I used to see about 10% of the articles. Now it is 25-30%.
This is worse than the grade inflation in US schools. If you can spell your own name, you will get a B or +3.